Go Scotland

Macker

Remember the idea of using power cables as a medium to transmit high-speed
Internet traffic? The concept was all the rage in the late 1990s but then
high-profile suppliers, such as Nortel/Norweb, Siemens and more recently
RWE, pulled out the market citing regulatory issues and slow sales. As a
result, ADSL cemented its position as the primary means to deliver broadband
to consumers.

However the technology hasn't gone away; far from it. Scotland last weekend
reaffirmed their commitment to develop Power Line Communications (PLC) as a
competitive broadband access and in-home LAN technology. It's hoped that the
technology offers an economicall viable way of deploying broadband services
in rural Scotland.

According to Antony Lole, a Telecom Infrastructure Manager at SSE, the trial
is still in its early stages, with just a dozen or so customers connected in
the Crieff and Campbeltown areas of Perthshire. However results so far are
encouraging, and guinea pigs are seeing good throughputs, in some cases
getting a symmetric connection delivering speeds in of 1Mbps

News source http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/22/27221.html


Macker

kamobe

http://www.esb.ie/main/news_events/press_release26.jsp

There's a press release from ESB made back in Feb '01.

http://www.esb.ie/main/news_events/press_release106.jsp

A tad more recent, from Jan '02.

It seems their main objective is to sell their services to OLO's. But they may be considering entering the market directly themselves...

SkepticOne

Those ESB press releases are about regional fibre optic cable - nothing to get excited about. As far as I know, this project is near completion. It is not about delivery to the homes.

The stuff in Scotland is about delivering broadband to the home using powerlines.

dahamsta

The ESB were researching PLC a while back though, I wonder if they'll start looking into it again. It still sounds to me like a way of fasttracking broadband rollout in Ireland.

adam

Dun

Originally posted by SkepticOne
Those ESB press releases are about regional fibre optic cable - nothing to get excited about. As far as I know, this project is near completion. It is not about delivery to the homes.

What is it for? I presume that it's nothing to do with the electricity network itself..

dahamsta

What is it for?

Uh, communications? Hello?

I presume that it's nothing to do with the electricity network itself..

Nope. The electricity market has been deregulated, so the ESB has decided to spread it's wings a little; it reckons it could be a player in the comms market. And it has plenty of advantages that can be leveraged to help it along, like a pre-existing network of ducting, and plenty of experience with digging up roads and laying stuff (so to speak); so it has a jump (so to speak) on other players. And of course they can route a fair whack of their internal comms through the network. Their timing wasn't the best, but the ESB is probably in a much better position than the traditional wholesale comms companies.

adam

SkepticOne

Originally posted by dun_do_bheal


What is it for? I presume that it's nothing to do with the electricity network itself..

It involves running fibre optic cables along existing national power lines. Capacity on these fibre lines may be then resold to telcos.

De Rebel

DON'T tell the ODTR or the Dept. of Comm about this- it will just be used as another excuse to **** around, issue press releases and do nothing.

spongebob

and had to be shut down after major complaints about its effect on the British Spying Industry amongst others

Modified technology is deployed in Scotland and elsewhere and is promising.

M

Dun

Originally posted by dahamsta
What is it for?

Uh, communications? Hello?

I presume that it's nothing to do with the electricity network itself..

Duh! I shoulda made myself clearer I know what it is and what it does, but what is it intended for?? Is it for companies or what? I just saw that it is supposed to be laid here in Donegal and I'm kinda surprised cause nothing ever comes up this far..
I can't imagine that there would be a great commercial demand either, but who knows. Mind you, I'm not complaining if there is a chance of possible domestic use.

dahamsta

As far as I can remember, and I think the press releases linked above will confirm this, the ESB intend only selling wholesale access to the network, i.e. you would need to be a telecommunications operator or enterprise business to get access. Kinda like Nevadatele and UTV.

adam